Hollywoodgate review - on tour with the Taliban

Egyptian journalist Ibrahim Nash’at is either very brave or slightly unhinged. His debut full-length documentary is an account of a year he spent in Afghanistan with the Taliban, after they’d taken control of the country at the end of August 2021, following the catastrophically inept evacuation of US and NATO forces.

Nash’at described his pitch to the Taliban like this: “I went in and I said, ‘I would like to show the world your image without putting my own point of view on it. Whatever I will see, I will try to show’.” It’s a fascinating premise, but the film is ultimately frustrating because the Taliban were careful not to reveal too much. It's access some areas, but not all.

Much of the time, we find Nash’at following Taliban bigwig Mawlawi Mansour, appointed head of the air force under the new regime. You do have to wonder about his competence, though, in a scene where he calculates that paying 67 workers 100 afghanis a day would total 67,000. But this does help to evoke the way the Taliban represent a universe entirely unrecognisable from the American one, as does a colleague’s question about why the Americans smashed up all their computers before they left. It has to be explained to him that it was because they contained secret information.A lot of footage was gathered at the abandoned US air base which gives the film its title (it has “Hollywood Gate” stencilled on a hangar door). The Americans supposedly left $7.12bn worth of military equipment when they scarpered with such indecent haste, though most of the stuff we see here is on the low-tech end of the scale. Also quite a lot of it is Russian, like rows of elderly Mi-17 helicopters, previously purchased by the US to supply the Afghan military.

Many of Mawlawi’s underlings are suspicious about Nash’at’s presence. “I don’t like journalists,” says one. “They’re always connected to some country’s intelligence.” Mawlawi explains that their guest is making a documentary. “It is like a movie, but with real people… if his intentions are bad he will die soon. That is what he says but let’s see what he does.”

Embellished with Volker Bertelmann’s menacing, minor-key score, the film feels more like a series of moments than a coherent 90-minute narrative, because Nash’at could only get what he was given, unless he wanted to get himself executed (he has described how he often found the pressure too much, and would return to Germany, where he’s based, to have sessions with a therapist).

One thing the Taliban aren’t shy about revealing, though, is how they view the role of women. When Mawlawi is told that some local women don’t adhere to Sharia, he retorts: “Then don’t let them come to work… They can only come to work if they cover their face.” Apparently he himself is married to a doctor, but he would only marry her if she stopped practising medicine. “I didn’t allow it any more.”

The film climaxes with a display of the Taliban’s military hardware, where visiting dignitaries include the “Chief of Protocol” from the Russian embassy, Iran’s Deputy Ambassador and some unidentified gentlemen who look distinctly Chinese. But the parade of tanks, armoured cars, ageing helicopters and the “suicide bombing battalion” riding motorbikes looks faintly absurd compared to the kind of show the Chinese or American forces could put on.

One episode where Nash’at seems to get near the knuckle is when his hosts plan to eliminate a band of resistance fighters by setting up a fake meeting to lure them out of hiding. Late at night, Nash’at travels with them to a remote village where their quarry has been captured, but it’s announced that “the cameraman stays here” (ie outside). We later hear that the captured subjects were interrogated all night, and we can only imagine what that might have entailed.

We hear Mawlawi talking on the phone: “The targeted insurgent was eliminated. His body is rotting out there.” It’s chilling, but, frustratingly, we have no way of confirming that it actually happened. Hollywoodgate was a powerful concept, but it lets the Taliban have the last laugh.

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